‘Comes in Hot!’ CNBC Anchor Breaks Bad News on Inflation Amid Trump’s War — PPI More Than Doubles Expectations

CNBC anchor Rick Santelli exclaimed that a key inflation measure was “com(ing) in hot!” as wholesale inflation more than doubled expectations amid President Donald Trump’s war with Iran.

On Thursday morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released a PPI (Producer Price Index)  report that showed much higher inflation than expected — more than double the .3 percent that was expected:

The Producer Price Index for final demand increased 0.7 percent in February. Prices for final demand services moved up 0.5 percent, and the index for final demand goods advanced 1.1 percent. The index for final demand rose 3.4 percent for the 12 months ended in February.

Santelli broke the news on Wednesday morning’s edition of CNBC’s Squawk Box, and went on to tell co-anchor Becky Quick that the report represents the worst of both worlds”:

CNBC ANCHOR BECKY QUICK: Rick Santelli is standing by at the CME in Chicago, and, Rick, that data is just seconds away.

CNBC ANCHOR RICK SANTELLI: Yes, we’re looking for our February read on the wholesale side of inflation, the producer price index.

Headline number expected to be up 3 tenths of a percent. Comes in hot, up 7 tenths a percent, up seven tenths!

That would be the highest level since it was up eight-tenths in July of 25!

Now, strip out food and energy, call it the core, up a half a percent. That’s a couple tenths higher than we were expecting.

…

CNBC ANCHOR BECKY QUICK: Rick, what does that tell you? I mean, I understand the short-term, we’re taking the Fed activity out from the two-year, and that’s why you see those spreads kind of get compressed.

The long end, does that tell you anything about how people are seeing the health of the economy down the road, or is it something else?

CNBC ANCHOR RICK SANTELLI: I do think that there is part of that reflected in this as well. It’s almost the worst of both worlds!

I guess stagflation would come close to describing the situation. We’re probably not going to see Fed easing and the long end. Well, part of it is weakness.

We’ve had a spat of some fairly weak numbers and then you put in the fact that we are on the PCE, you know, 3% handle on some of the Fed’s favorite metrics, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out today.

It would be very difficult even for some of recent appointees to think that easing could even be on the menu at this, or even very close subsequent meetings down the road.

Watch above via CNBC’s Squawk Box.

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